The ABC is stifling debate on Armenia by denouncing critics

THE ABC has a new topic on which no debate is allowed. Try, and you’re denounced as a “denier”. God, I’m sick of these attacks on reason.

Demonstrate that the “stolen generations” is a myth are you’re a “racist”.

Point out that the world has failed to warm as global warming activists claimed and you’re a “climate change denier”.

Now this, from the ABC on the weekend: “One of the world’s most vocal Armenian genocide deniers will make an address at Parliament House in Canberra next week.”

Labor’s Laurie Ferguson had booked a room for an address titled “What happened during 1915-1923?”

“The address will be given by Professor Justin McCarthy, an American history professor who many Armenians view with the same disdain as Jews view Holocaust denier David Irving.”

I’ve heard McCarthy lecture and am appalled this scholar is likened to a Holocaust denier.

McCarthy does not deny that a million or more Armenians died in Turkey in one of the last century’s most brutal conflicts. What he disputes is that Turkish authorities deliberately planned the killings to wipe out the Christian Armenians.

He argues they were instead the result of a civil war after Armenian irregulars backed a Russian invasion.

Here come our politicians.

NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell was attacked by Turkey last week for successfully getting Parliament to condemn “the genocide of the Armenians”.

It is not the NSW Parliament’s business or expertise to resolve historical debates over events a century ago in another land.